“Never, never, you must never remind a man at work on a political job that he may be President. It almost always kills him politically.
He loses his nerve; he can’t do his work; he gives up the
very traits that are making him a possibility.”

– To reporters at New York Police Headquarters, November 1896

“It is always better to be an original than an imitation.”

– Forum, April 1894

“No man ever permanently helped a reform by lying on behalf of the reform. Tell the truth about it; and then you can expect
to be believed when you tell further truths.”

– Pacific Theological Seminary, Spring 1911

“[A] man knows little of our political, social and industrial needs as a nation who does not know that… politics… affect women precisely as much as they affect men; and he must be unfortunate in his life of acquaintances if he does not know women whose advice
and counsel are pre-eminently worth having in regard
to the matters affecting our welfare…”

– St. Johnsbury Vermont, August 30, 1912

“Labor organizations are like other organizations, like organizations of capitalists; sometimes they act very well and sometimes they act very badly. We should consistently favor them when they act
well, and as fearlessly oppose them when they act badly.”

– Berkeley, California, March 23, 1911

“In a time of sudden and wide-spread disaster, caused by a flood, a blizzard, an earthquake, or an epidemic, there may be ample reason for the extension of charity on the largest scale to everyone who needs it. But these conditions are wholly exceptional, and the methods of relief employed to meet them must also be treated as wholly exceptional … The greatest possible good can be done by the extension of a helping hand at the right moment, but the attempt to carry any one permanently can end in nothing but harm.”

– Essay on Civic Helpfulness
Published in the “Century,” October 1900

“We have no higher duty than to promote the efficiency
of the individual. There is no surer road
to the efficiency of the nation.”

– Ohio Constitutional Convention
Columbus, Ohio, February 21, 1912

“Our country offers the most wonderful example of democratic government on a giant scale that the world has ever seen;
and the peoples of the world are watching
to see whether we succeed or fail.”

– Saratoga, New York, September 27, 1910

“I would rather go out of politics feeling that I had done what was right than stay in with the approval of all men, knowing
in my heart that I had acted as I ought not to.”

– New York Assembly, 1884

“The long path leading upward toward the light cannot be traversed at once, or in a day, or in a year. But there are certain steps that can be taken… Having taken these first steps, we shall see more
clearly how to walk still further with a bolder stride.”

– New York, October 30, 1912

“I think very little of mere oratory. I feel an impatient contempt
for the man of words if he is merely a man of words.”

– Letter to Henry Cabot Lodge, July 19, 1908

“From the days when civilized man first began to strive for
self-government and democracy, success in this effort
has depended primarily upon the ability
to steer clear of extremes.”

– The Metropolitan Magazine, December 1918